The top gun at famous firearms maker Smith & Wesson was forced to resign this week after it was revealed he had a secret past – as an ex-convict who served more than a decade in prison for a string of armed robberies.

James Joseph Minder, 74, the newly appointed board chairman of the parent company Smith & Wesson Holding Corp., stepped down after it was disclosed that in the 1950s and 1960s, he was convicted for bank robbery, a rash of drugstore stickups, a jewelry-shop holdup and an attempted prison escape in Michigan.

His gun-toting crime spree was even chronicled in the Detroit News in 1959 with a front-page headline that read: “Student by Day, Bandit at Night,” referring to Minder’s after-school activities while attending the University of Michigan.

Minder yesterday told The Republican newspaper in Springfield, Mass., where the 150-year-old gunmaker is based, that he resigned because “I felt it was the best thing for the company, given the circumstances.”

He said he didn’t disclose his past to other board members because “nobody asked,” insisting that since his release from prison 30 years ago, he has turned his life around.

After a 15-year prison stint, Minder founded Spectrum Human Services, a successful, nonprofit agency serving delinquent and disabled Michigan youths, and ran it for 20 years before retiring to Arizona in 1997.